Hayfoot Henry
| Hayfoot Henry | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | All Funny Comics #1 |
| Created by | Alvin Schwartz (writer), Stan Kaye (artist) |
| In-story information | |
| Team affiliations | Sleepyside police department |
| Abilities | Always speaks in rhyme |
Hayfoot Henry is a fiction DC Comics character who made his debut in All Funny Comics #1 in 1943, then moved to Action Comics, where he had a feature story in issues #78 through #118, with one final appearance in issue #123. This was in a time when Action Comics was an anthology title with multiple feature strips. Henry's strip was intended as comic relief to balance the more serious-toned other features of the comic book, such as Superman.
Fictional character biography
Henry was a police officer in the village of Sleepyside who was attempting to write a rhyming dictionary; in each story, he needed to solve both a crime and a rhyme. He would have a word such as "orange" for which he was attempting to come up with a rhyme, at the same time that he was seeking clues to solve a mysterious crime, and the solutions to both of his problems would come along at once to resolve the storyline. Some of the rhyme solutions were rather questionable, however; for instance, "orange" ended up being rhymed with "sore binge".
The stories were done with all dialogue (whether by Henry himself or other characters) in rhyme.